Get Out of Your Comfort Zone (Your Success Depends on it)

“Nobody ever died of discomfort, yet living in the name of comfort has killed more ideas, more opportunities, more actions, and more growth than everything else combined. Comfort kills!” T. Harv Eker

It’s about time you took that risk and try that new idea, you have hesitated for far too long. The reward (and the lessons learned) will be, without question, worth the risk. You may be doing what everyone does–conforming to norms and and everyday pressure around you but that’s not where you need to be.

No one likes to move beyond his or her comfort zone, but that’s really where the magic happens. It’s where you can grow, learn, and develop in a way that expands your horizon beyond your wildest dream. Everything remarkable happens beyond the safe zone. By pushing yourself into new areas you will have a chance to authentically define who you are, and break free of the limitations of what others think you should be.

Growth outside your comfort zone can mean confidence in other areas. One of the greatest benefits of stepping out of your comfort zones in areas like speaking at events or stepping up your exercise routine is that growth or progress in your current endeavour can give you a massive amount of confidence in almost every other area of your life. This is a good reason why you should have many areas where you stretch yourself.

According to Marla Tabaka (an Entrepreneurial Coach and an Inc. Magazine author): “Your comfort zone keeps you in a very predictable space: You usually know exactly what’s going to happen. A fear of the unknown will keep you stuck forever. So the trick here is to let go of your expectations and accept the results of your actions. Take risks in measured amounts. If you are designing a new consulting program or rolling out a new product, do it in small bits. Don’t go gangbusters and risk losing it all. Gamble with something you are willing to lose. These losses will teach you something, such as how to make the product better or market it differently. Look forward to the outcome, whatever it is.” Inc.

Too many of us are still playing it safe in our choices everyday. “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.” That’s a quote you should always think about when change and risk taking seem like a long shot to take. Nobody said it would be easy to start a new project, start and maintain a new habit or even stop that habit you have been thinking about for the past six months.But the ugly truth is that if you don’t do something sigificant about it, you not be able to change at all.

Whatever profession you find yourself, there are somethings you just can’t think about changing, but if you expect a different and even better results, it’s about time you did something different. The results of a step outside your comfort zone could change your outlook on other challenges you may be considering or other ideas you want to try for your business.

This is what Richard Branson (founder of Virgin Group) has to say about taking risks and challenging yourself: “At Virgin, I use two techniques to free our team from the same old routine: breaking records and making bets. Taking chances is a great way to test myself and our group, and also to push boundaries while having fun together. One of the great benefits of taking on challenges in your working life is that you and your team learn to confront risk together – and also to lose sometimes, because when you make a good wager, the odds are not going to be in your favor. The calculated risks you and your team take should be strategic judgments, not just blind gambles: Protect the downside by figuring out the odds of success, working out what the worst possible consequences would be, then deciding whether to accept.”

Get out of your comfort zone, your success or breakthrough probably depends on it. If you do better outside your safe zone, you will most likely start thinking about how you can do it more often. If it turns out bad, you would have learnt one more way that doesn’t work. Either way, it’s never a bad idea to do something that scares you a little bit; it’s taking that chance and seeing the outcome that may surprise you.

Founding Editor @Alltopstartups, Columnist @Inc. Magazine and Curator at Postanly (his free weekly digest of the best life and career improvement posts on the web). Subscribe for free. Check out his books on Amazon.